Usually, metadata are stored in a local database in an individual format. Based on these database metadata, an essence may be found easily.
For data exchange among a plurality of applications, the Material exchange Format (MXF) as developed in the Pro-MPEG Forum (www.pro-mpeg.org.), is an format exemplary that can be used for such an exchange operation. The MXF data format has many advantages. An important advantage of the MXF is that is supports metadata functionality. This means that the MXF makes it possible to interchange or store essence user data together with their associated metadata.
When applying the MXF in a local computer system, metadata can exist both in a local metadata database and each MXF file. It is impossible to realize synchronously metadata editing for metadata in the local database and metadata in MXF files. Thus, the metadata provided in the two different formats have to be edited twice.